Oscar Mayer dropped a maple bourbon thick-cut bacon this spring, and it’s already drawing attention from weekend cooks who don’t need much convincing when the words “barrel-aged bourbon” show up on a package.

The bacon is made with Evan Williams bourbon. That’s not a throwaway detail. Barrel-aged spirits carry compounds that produce caramel and vanilla notes, and those flavors translate into the meat during curing. What you get isn’t sweet in the way a glazed donut is sweet. It’s smoky first, then the maple and caramel ease in behind it. The profile lands somewhere between a Sunday morning and a backyard afternoon, which is pretty much exactly where Oscar Mayer is aiming.

Bacon itself has a long and genuinely fascinating history as a cured and preserved meat, but the sweet-savory combinations that have taken hold in American kitchens reflect something real about how home cooks are thinking these days. Maple and pork have shared a plate for generations. Bourbon just sharpens the angle.

Cook it a little past where you think it’s done. Seriously. The maple sweetness concentrates as the edges crisp, and the Evan Williams bourbon notes get more distinct right when the strips start to curl. Not overpowering. Just present, and that’s the difference between bacon that disappears off the plate and bacon people ask about.

“It’s the kind of flavor you don’t expect from a grocery store brand,” one early reviewer told Taste of Home, which covered the rollout in detail.

Simple applications work. Eggs, toast, a few strips on the side. That’s a complete morning right there. But the bacon earns its keep in other spots too. Crumble it over a chicken salad and watch people try to figure out why it tastes so good. Lay strips on a burger and skip the condiments, because the maple glaze handles that job. Build a breakfast sandwich on thick bread with a runny egg and two or three slices of this bacon and you won’t need anything else.

The Bloody Mary angle is worth calling out specifically. A strip of maple bourbon bacon as a garnish on a Bloody Mary isn’t a gimmick. The salt and spice of the drink, and then that sweet caramel bacon cutting across both of them. Worth trying at a backyard get-together this season, full stop.

A note on handling: the USDA’s guidelines on bacon and cured meats recommend storing unopened packages in the refrigerator and using opened bacon within seven days. Given how fast this particular product tends to move once people try it, seven days probably isn’t going to be a problem.

Here’s the catch. This is a limited-edition product. Oscar Mayer started rolling it out to retailers in April, and it’s expected to stay on shelves through grilling season. The brand is running a broader test this spring and summer across multiple new products, essentially letting the shopping cart decide what earns a permanent spot. If you try it and want to see it stick around, the most direct thing you can do is buy it.

Two more Oscar Mayer products are also hitting stores later this month. Bun-length Beef and Pork Franks and Cheesy Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dogs are both coming, and they round out a lineup that’s clearly built around the cookout calendar. The Cheesy Smokehouse Stuffed Hot Dogs in particular sound like exactly the kind of thing that generates a crowd around the grill.

Spring’s here. The grill doesn’t care whether it’s a Tuesday or a Saturday. And Oscar Mayer just gave you three new reasons to fire it up.